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THE
NEW JEWISH HOME CELEBRATES
8
REMARKABLE NEW YORKERS OVER
80
3rd Annual “Eight Over Eighty” Benefit Gala
Honors
Bob Appel * Harry Belafonte * Jacques d’Amboise * Joy
Henshel * Keith Reinhard * Chita Rivera * Liz Smith * Caroll
Spinney
Monday, April 11, 2016
Mandarin Oriental
New York
At its third annual Eight Over Eighty benefit gala,
The New Jewish Home (formerly, Jewish Home Lifecare)
will pay tribute to eight New Yorkers who, in their ninth
and tenth decades, continue to live lives of remarkable
achievement, vitality and civic engagement.
The event, at the
Mandarin Oriental New York on Monday, April 11,
is expected to attract more
than 450 guests and raise more than $1 million for
the nonprofit New Jewish Home’s
rehabilitation, skilled nursing, and home healthcare
programs, which together serve 12,000 older adults each
year.
The
honorees, each of whom will be celebrated in a video
vignette, are financier Bob Appel, singer and
humanitarian Harry Belafonte, ballet great Jacques
d’Amboise, philanthropist Joy Henshel, Broadway
superstar Chita Rivera, legendary ad man Keith
Reinhard, gossip queen Liz Smith, and Sesame
Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, Caroll Spinney.
These men and women represent the best of the best in arts
and entertainment, advertising, business, volunteerism and
philanthropy. They are movers and shakers who are still
contributing and still making waves, in the process showing
the world that trailblazing is ageless.
“By
2030, 30 percent of the U.S. population will be over 80,”
said Audrey Weiner, President and CEO of The New
Jewish Home. “Like the teeming energy New York itself, the
variety of accomplishments and the personalities of our
eight honorees shows us what it means to age like a New
Yorker. In other words, the sky’s the limit for these
vibrant men and women, still going strong over 80.”
GALA BENEFIT COMMITTEE
Helen and Bob Appel, Carol Becker, Margot and Norman
Freedman, Robin and Scott Gottlieb, Susan and David Haas,
Ruth and David Levine, Melanie Katzman and
Russell Makowsky,
Rose-Lee and Keith Reinhard, Elissa and Jim ‘Great Neck’
Richman, Tami Schneider, Elizabeth Grayer and Aidan Synnott
HONOREE BIOGRAPHIES
Bob Appel is President of Appel Associates,
a money management and investment firm, and was a partner of
the investment advisory firm Neuberger Berman for 20 years.
He is Chairman of the Board of Jazz at Lincoln Center, to
which, in 2014, he and his wife, Helen, made the largest
individual gift in the organization’s history. He is also a
trustee emeritus of Cornell University and a committed
fundraiser for Weill Cornell Medical College, home of the
Helen and Robert Appel Institute for Alzheimer’s Disease
Research.
Harry Belafonte
is an outstanding performer and producer whose album
“Calypso” became the first recording in history to sell more
than a million copies. He is also a humanitarian with a long
and distinguished record of human rights advocacy that
includes serving as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and
organizing the multi-artist “We Are the World” recording,
which raised millions of dollars for emergency assistance in
Africa. Belafonte’s many awards include the Kennedy Center
Honors and the National Medal of the Arts.
One of
the finest classical dancers of our time, Jacques
d’Amboise is also an arts education leader who created a
model program that has introduced thousands of school
children to the magic and discipline of dance and the
founder of the National Dance Institute. As a dancer, Mr.
d’Amboise is most remembered for his portrayal of what
critics called “the definitive Apollo.” A choreographer as
well, his credits include almost 20 works commissioned for
New York City Ballet.
Joy Henshel is a longtime, esteemed director
of The New Jewish Home’s Sarah Neuman Center as well as
being a prolific philanthropist in the areas of the arts,
health, social justice and Jewish organizations. Her public
service includes her appointment by Mayor John Lindsay to
the New York-Tokyo sister city program in 1966, and two
years of work for the events firm planning and executing
Liberty Weekend, the four-day celebration of the restoration
and centennial of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Mrs.
Henshel is an active trustee of Surprise Lake Camp, a
longtime volunteer at White Plains Hospital, the mother of
four daughters, and a very generous donor to The New Jewish
Home.
Under the leadership of Keith Reinhard, DDB
Worldwide, one of the world's largest and most creative
advertising agency networks, produced award-winning work for
Volkswagen, Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay, Dell Computer, JC
Penney, Ameriquest and many other clients. Reinhard himself
gave birth to such memorable advertising characters and
slogans as, for McDonald’s, the Hamburglar and "You Deserve
a Break Today,” which in 1999 Advertising Age named the best
advertising jingle of the 20th century and one of the
century's top-five campaigns.
After her breakout portrayal of Anita in 1957’s West
Side Story, the great Broadway star Chita Rivera went
on to earn a Tony nomination for Bye Bye Birdie and
Tony Awards for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider
Woman. Her many other spellbinding performances include
those in Nine; Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life,
(another Tony nomination); The Mystery of Edwin Drood;
and The Visit, for which she received her tenth Tony
nomination. Rivera has received the Kennedy Center Honors
award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A
writer of humor, wit and empathy, Liz Smith is much
more than a gossip columnist, though she helped define the
term. Smith began writing in the 1950s and has never
stopped, working for Hearst, Cosmopolitan, Sports
Illustrated, the New York Daily News, “Live at
Five,” Newsday, the New York Post, and now The
Huffington Post and New York Social Diary. She is a
best-selling author and has the distinction of being the
only columnist to have had her column printed in three major
New York City papers simultaneously.
For more than 40 years, Caroll Spinney has been
Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, in the
process earning four Emmy Awards, two Gold Records, and two
Grammy Awards. In 2000, the Library of Congress declared
Spinney’s Big Bird a "Living Legend." With J Milligan,
Spinney has written The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark
Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons from a Life in Feathers.
Spinney recently received the Lifetime Achievement Emmy
Award from the National Association of Television Arts and
Sciences.
# # #
Serving New Yorkers of all faiths and ethnicities for 167
years, The New Jewish Home (formerly, Jewish Home
Lifecare) is transforming eldercare as we know it. One of
the nation’s largest and most diversified not‐for‐profit
geriatric health and rehabilitation systems, Jewish Home
serves 12,000 older adults each year, in their homes and on
three campuses, through short-term rehabilitation, long‐term
skilled nursing, low-income housing, and a wide range of
home health programs. Jewish Home believes that high quality
care and personal dignity are everyone’s right, regardless
of background or economic circumstances. Technology,
innovation, applied research and new models of care put The
New Jewish Home at the vanguard of eldercare providers
across the country. For more information, visit
www.jewishhome.org.
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